Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton Christensen Use empathy and active listening to discover “jobs to be done”, the progress customers want to achieve in specific circumstances in their lives. Jobs provide the causal factor to explain why customers choose one product over another. Design the experience you deliver around your customer’s job and ...

Product managers must break free from patterns which make them susceptible to disruption from new entrants. To successfully introduce new products, product managers need to use jobs-to-be-done segmentation rather than product- or customer-based segmentation. The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christensen In Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen introduces the famous “milkshake” case study which spawned the jobs-to-be-done method of customer segmentation. This ...

Innovation is hard and ideas only get you up one side of the mountain. You still have to go over the other side to reach your goal by executing well. The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan Vijay Govindarajan‘s four books cover different aspects of successful innovation that begins in established organizations (versus startups). In The ...

To successfully incubate and spin-off new ventures, companies must use the right mix of borrowing, forgetting, and learning organizational DNA.  Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution by Vijay Govindarajan Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators covers strategic innovation, which he defines as a process of exploring experimental strategies. He focuses specifically on what it takes to incubate and spin off ...

Design requires both expansive, exploratory methods (divergent thinking) as well as prioritization and focus (convergent thinking). Pairing the two approaches increases the chances of finding the most effective solutions. Design Research: Methods and Perspectives by Brenda Laurel   Design Research is a collection of writings on various research tools and techniques available for designers. In addition to covering traditional design research topics like ...

Different types of innovations require different marketing strategies. Incremental and breakthrough innovations, particularly, require different choices for marketing strategies, interactions between marketing and R&D, market research, advertising, and pricing. The five types of innovation occur at various points in the value chain and in different parts of the organization. Marketing of High-Technology Products and Innovations by Jakki Mohr, Sanjit Sengupta, ...

Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition by Adam Hartung Creating disruption is a highly sought after capability due to the promise of profit and longevity through innovation and growth. Multiple disruptions over time can extend corporate success beyond market cycles. Many books seek to crack the code of repeat innovation and capitalizing on market shifts. Adam Hartung‘s ...

Innovation isn’t confined to break-out, market-creating, blockbuster products and services. There are innovation types available for each phase of the category life cycle, from growth through maturity and decline, to end of life. Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore Managing innovation Dealing with Darwin is about managing the internal and external context of innovation. Moore asks: “how can we innovate ...